Rite of Passage for the Twenty-first Century Creative

10 February, 2013 By

It’s been a long time since I’ve put myself out into the world in the way I just did. This goes beyond just writing a story and letting someone read it, which, I admit, is hard enough. I like to think I put on a good poker face. I’m unflusterable behind the scenes. I act natural and everyone thinks I have massive confidence. And I have some confidence. I’m a good writer. I’m a good editor.

But today I submitted a Kickstarter campaign for a project I’ve been working on with a lot of other people for almost two years. I spent weeks perfecting the page and stressing over the video and rewards. Then I popped it up there, pressed the send button.

I was so nervous I almost got the giggles several times during the making of the video which we did in one take. I didn’t notice until later that I actually called Tim my cohort and compatriot, both of which are either inaccurate or just plain weird. I said to him afterward, “Did I call you my cohort? As in platoon?” I guess that was it. My announcement that Tim is my platoon. Now you know. He is my army of god-like men. Together we kick the butts of books everywhere. Or something.

Anyway, when you watch me up there, I’d like you to know that this project is important to me. I’ve poured myself into these pages. I’ve begged and cajoled people into writing and drawing for it. I’ve reasoned and risked. I’m both excited and terrified now.

You all are my peers. I want you to like me. I want you to like it.

I join the ranks of those who know how this feels. Rite of passage, I think.

Filed Under: Announcements, Earning a living as a writer

How to find a literary agent for your novel

27 August, 2012 By

If you’re going to get published in the US the traditional way, you probably want a literary agent. Can you get published without one?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Yes, but you will probably still want one later to help you with your contract.

Longer answer still: A good agent will greatly increase your chances of being published in the traditional way. In addition to contracts, there’s a big advantage to having someone working for you, looking for publishers who might want your work. Especially when this someone has established contacts in publishing and a reputation with editors at publishing houses.

The hard part

Agents want to represent things they know they can sell to publishers. An agent only makes money when he or she sells something. So in order to find the right agent, you first have to write a really good book. You should do everything you’d do if your book was going to go out into the marketplace tomorrow. In other words, get other people to read it and give you feedback. Friends and family are a good place to start, but an editor or a writing professor or someone with training should be involved somewhere along the way. Revise it. Make it look perfect. Double check the first five pages for typos and make sure the beginning of your book is interesting, because that’s what an agent is going to see first. If there’s a typo on the first page or the beginning drags, the agent may not even get through the first five pages.

When it’s ready, you’ll need to find some agents who represent the kind of book you’ve written. The easiest way to do that if you’re looking for an agent in the US. is with AgentQuery.com, a reputable listing service for agents with a searchable database. You can search by genre or by book title. So if you can think of a few books that are in some way similar to yours, you can see who represents those. What you’re looking for are agents who might be interested in your book, based on what you can find out about them.You can also use Query Tracker, the AAR database, the Absolute Write message boards, Publishers Marketplace, and probably some other similar websites. Just be careful to make sure the agents you query are reputable. There are some scammers out there. Being part of a known agency or representing the authors of other traditionally published books are pretty good signs that the person is legit agent.

Note: If you’re looking for an agent in the UK, the Association of Authors’ Agents recommends looking at the Writer’s Handbook and the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook for a listing of agents and a description of what they’re looking for. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a searchable web database like AgentQuery in the UK.

Once you find someone there you think might be interested, read further about them. Go to their agency’s website. Read interviews they’ve done. This will help you decide whether they really are a good agent for you and if so, how to tailor your approach to them. Also, most agents will tell you – or their agencies’ websites will – what exactly they want you to send them when you query them. This is probably a query letter either by email or by mail. Many agents take email only now, but some still don’t want emailed queries. They may also ask for a small sample of your work. The first five pages is a common request. But some don’t want anything up front. The key is FOLLOW THEIR INSTRUCTIONS. Agents don’t want to work with people who can’t follow instructions.

After matching your book to an agents’ preferences, a good query letter is crucial. (But a good query letter sent to an agent who doesn’t want the kind of book you’ve written will just be a waste of your time and theirs.) There are plenty of instructions on the internet for writing good query letters, so I’m not going to tell you how to do it. Here’s an essentials template from Nathan Bransford, novelist and former literary agent for Curtis Brown to use as a guide.

You can also get someone else to write it for you, along with all the other materials you’ll need along the way, like various lengths of synopses of your novel. I am terrible at summarizing my own writing and I think most people struggle more with summarizing their own work than they do other people’s. So when you have to write that summary paragraph in your query, you might want to ask for help either from someone who hasn’t read your book or from a professional. (Ghostwoods Books will do a query packet for you. Tim is fabulous at this summary stuff. His queries usually generate a request for a partial manuscript, if you target the right agents for your novel. I recommend him to my clients.)

Being professional and polite will go a long way toward getting you an agent. In addition to wanting books they can sell, agents want authors that don’t make them pull their hair out. Life is too short when you have 15,000 queries a year to sort through and a bunch of books to sell and contracts to parse. You just don’t want to work with someone who makes you wish you could go back to bed (and not in a good way).

That’s all the advice I have for now. Have to get to work. Good luck out there.

 

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, writing

Welcome to Freelancing

29 July, 2012 By

For several years I worked at a salaried job where I had the luxury of helping people without making them pay me money. As a freelancer, I have to ask people to pay me for my work. This is a double-edged sword in that I’ve discovered that the people who are willing to scrabble for the money also seem to be the ones most willing to do the work required to make progress in their writing.

I had a similar experience myself when I enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts program. Suddenly, when working for people I respected and paying quite a lot of money for that privilege (albeit loan money – I still have to pay it back) I found myself willing to work harder than I had on my own.Thus in two years, I read 80 books and turned out hundreds of pages of fiction and critical essays on aspects of writing craft.

There is also, obviously, the fact that I’m my own boss to a certain extent. I decide when I work. Sort of. I work from home. No one notices if I’m reading or working on my own writing during ‘work hours.’ The reality of this is a bit more complicated, though. If I have work to do and I’m not doing it, I feel guilty. This prevents me from spending as much time on my own writing as I would like. It also prevents me from doing various other things that I really want to do. I covet any free time I have jealously and do what I most want to do, which is usually sleep. Yes, I often work until after midnight. Occasionally until 2 am. So when I can’t work any more, I take the wild liberty of going to bed.

The financial side is a bit troubling. So, let’s look at a hypothetical instead of my exact reality. A bit of reality based fiction for you. The reality is more clients, more work, more people actually paying on time. More money needed. But this will give you a good sense of what it’s like.

Editor needs, let’s say, $1000 a month minimum to pay student loans, electricity, water bills, health insurance, credit card bills. This doesn’t even include feeding or clothing or housing herself. This is the amount she must make to keep the debt dogs from claiming her first born child.

She has four weeks into which she must schedule and complete sufficient work to earn this amount. If she’s lucky, she will earn a bit more and she’ll actually be able to eat and/or go to the dentist or get a hair cut.

She carefully plans a schedule.

Client: Ted Phillips.  Ted has a novel of 80,00 words. She agrees to do a round of copy edits on Ted’s book for $800. They agree that he’ll pay her $200 a week for the work.  She can’t afford to do the work before being paid for it because if he doesn’t come through with the payments on time, she is doomed to not pay her bills this month.  It will take her approximately 40 hours to do the work. She can only spend ten hours each week on his project. Ted pays her on week one. On week two he is late. She understands. On week three he doesn’t pay. Total this month from this client: $400.

Client: Candy Corn. Candy has a collection of erotic short stories. She agrees to pay $100 to have each one edited. In their initial discussions, she says she will be sending something every two weeks. She sends the first story and $100 and the editor edits and returns it. The second week, Candy sends an email saying that she’s traveling and she’ll send more when she gets back. It’s over a month before the editor receives another story and payment from her. Total this month from this client: $100.

Client: Sam Hyatt. Sam wants to mentor with the editor. He pays her between $65 and $110 dollars about once a week. He pays regularly when he has another chapter ready to be looked at. The editor knows he will be consistent with sending her work and paying her, but she doesn’t know how much he’ll be paying. Total from this client this month: $240.

Client: Brodie Burrows. Brodie has a deadline by which he needs to get his novel edited. He wants to submit it at a particular event. In order to get it done in time, the editor must prioritize it. She discovers partway through it that the second half of the book needs much more work than she was prepared for when she began the edit. Brodie has already paid her $500. That was last month. She needs to finish the edit before he will pay her the remaining chunk. The editor needs $300 more at a minimum. Finishing this edit seems the best way to do that.  Total from this client this month: $300? (If she can finish the edit.)

Ted and Candy begin pressuring her about when she can get more of their stuff done. They’re not very forthcoming with the money. Ted decides to make a lot of changes to one of the chapters she’s already edited and now he expects the editor to re-edit that chapter. He doesn’t offer her any additional money, though.

Meanwhile a new client offers her more work, but she feels she can’t take on any more until she’s cleared some of the existing work off her desk.

At the same time, she must be planning her schedule for the next month and finding clients who will have writing ready to edit (and who can afford to pay her) because time without work is likely to lead to financial disaster.

___________

Now this fiction is not fully accurate, but all of these things have definitely happened with clients of mine. It makes it necessary to overbook work because almost inevitably someone won’t come through when they said they would. Mostly I wrote this as a way to explain to people why I can’t always do their work immediately or why I have to be firm about prices. I develop relationships with my clients, friendships even. At some point, it becomes difficult to ask them to give me money. I’m invested in making their project as good as it can possibly be or in helping them become the best writers they can be. I do understand that it’s difficult to afford. I try to be sensitive to this. But the truth, as noted by my partner on his editing rates page, is that the landlord won’t bargain our rent down. We have to make a certain hourly wage and work a certain number of hours because we do this for a living.

If you work with any freelancer, try to bear this in mind. In one sense, it’s no different from going to a shop where they make copies for you. You try to see what deals they have maybe, but then you pay their price. Money is exchanged for goods and services. If you want more copies, you pay more money. In another way, you will potentially get much more out of your freelancer than you would in a shop. A talented artist or editor doesn’t just do their job. They give you access to their creativity, their work ethic, their experience, their education. In the case of an editor who teaches, you’ll take permanent lessons away with you.

I have to remind myself of that, as much as anyone else.

Now let’s go get ice cream.

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, Editing

The Role of Writers and Other Creative Workers in Social Discourse

10 May, 2012 By

I haven’t read anything that covers this topic, so I’d be interested in being pointed to other articles that discuss it and hearing the thoughts of anyone who cares to comment.

Writers and other creatives (artists, actors, musicians in particular) have historically used their talents to sway opinions on the important issues of their times. This is not something limited to Western culture. In Soviet Russia, for example, science fiction and fantasy writings of the past have concealed lessons about the tyranny of Soviet government.  Post-colonial writers from around the world have and continue to contribute to social discourse, raising awareness of imposed cultures and biased histories.Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird  brought forward the racial biases of the legal system and the book had a tremendous impact. These are only a couple of examples from a vast number of contributions made by writers throughout history to shaping society and ending injustice.

Non-fiction writers are supplanting the media with blogs and on the spot reportage. The access granted by the interweb allows independent journalists to be more open than those paid by big media companies. So in the new age, what is the fiction writer’s role on the front of social activism? What does the self-published writer owe in this vein? Is social commentary a luxury granted only to those published in the main stream, or to the contrary, do the self-published have more leeway on this issue?

Musicians in the new world are taking an active stance. Amanda Palmer is a good example. Her activism is focused around the oppressive system by which traditional record labels made money off of recording artists disproportionately. The artist saw very little of the monetary rewards from the production of their music and gave up a lot of freedom. She’s making a case for crowd funding of music in order to allow the artist to create and survive/thrive.

Visual artist Molly Crabapple is making a similar case for art. She addresses issues like the difficulty of taking work on spec (meaning, doing work first in hopes that it will raise money or sell) and how this system makes it harder for an artist to earn a living.

These are all issues to do with raising awareness about how hard it is to make a living in the arts, but both Palmer and Crabapple are involved in/support the Occupy Wall Street movement and other progressive issues. They are set apart only by the visibility of their efforts. Many independent musicians and artists do similar work on a smaller, less visible scale.

But what about writers? Where are the independent writers leading the activism charge? Of course, some writers published by the big publishers still shout into the void from time to time. And a whole host of writers who work for small presses are addressing social issues. But how are indie writers doing it? As we seem to be moving more in the direction of self-publishing, is it going to be all about how to hit it big and not at all about what we can do with these voices we’re trying so hard to make heard?

Okay, so everybody’s got to make a living. Do we only get to make a statement after we’re insanely successful? (See this article by Stephen King.) Or in the case of indie writers, never at all because we risk alienating readers? I suppose I shouldn’t refer to myself as an indie writer. I’m still marginally in favor of the traditional system (as broken as it appears to be). But the tide is turning. Eventually there will be a way that good writers can get their work into the public eye without going through traditional channels.

How do we make a difference and still make a living? How do we help shape the New Publishing Paradigm to be less oppressive to writers and at the same time use our writing skills to be the voices of the voiceless? What do we owe the world on this front? Those of who don’t have a lot of money, but whose strong suit is our talent, our knowledge, our creativity, our compassion? How do we make a stand?

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, Indie Publishing, Politics, Writers

Taking new editing clients for April

3 March, 2012 By

My schedule’s pretty full for March, but I’ll be looking to take on another novel and a few shorter pieces, or a chapter by chapter novel (in addition to doing one all in one go) for April. I’m a good writer, but I’m a great editor. I can give you references. And I’m pretty generous with my clients to the extent that I can afford to be.

I also do writing mentoring, by which I mean, I use your work to help you learn more about writing. I write comments, answer questions, suggest readings. I’ve seen writers improve dramatically while they’re working with me. Even writers who’ve been writing for years can benefit from a good editor or writing mentor.

You can find out more about my services here:http://salomejones.com/?page_id=1198

I earn most of my living from editing and teaching writing, so I have to keep the schedule booked in advance. Writing also pays occasionally, but when you’re a novelist, it’s a few months to a year or more between paychecks.

I hope to put together an online writing workshop soon. I just need to find a way to carve out the time from my writing/editing schedule. I have a plan in the works for this and I’ll keep you posted about it as it develops. I may also try to put together an in person workshop either on my own, or with one or two other talented people. Just need the time and a good place to host it in London.

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, Editing, Uncategorized

What is Salome up to, besides talking about herself in the third person?

12 February, 2012 By

So things on my plate at the moment.

I’m doing a lot of editing for other people right now. I have three novels on my list. One of them is the length of two regular novels. It’s an amazing and very English book. That’s a project which will take me several more weeks. Also two other novels that I’m doing more slowly, a chapter at a time. And I have an experimental short story for a collection. It’s requiring a lot of thinking time ahead of the actual work.

My own work: I have the As Above, So Below anthology to edit and decide the future of. Any day now, I expect to recommence working on Red Phone Box, the book, getting it ready for release, The pieces are almost all in place for that now. And I want to start thinking about the second season of the series which will take up where the book leaves off, i.e. after a lot of stories you haven’t seen yet, so get ready.

Also, I’m working on the London Surreal magazine project. I have the content for the first issue pretty much planned out, but I’m still trying to get the layout/website to look the way I want it to. I have some high goals. I’m being helped by Alex Seccombe and he has pretty much nailed the idea that I was hoping for. However, it’s going to take a while for us to pull this fancy website together, so it’s not happening as quickly as I hoped. (What does? I’m very optimistic about deadlines, so I never seem to allow enough lead time.)

Also, I’m writing a novel. I haven’t been able to work on it for the past week because of my editing workload, but I’m hoping that at some point next week, I’ll have the schedule enough under control that I can go back to it.

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, Editing, Personal Tagged With:

How to ‘succeed’ as a writer

5 February, 2012 By

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of the magazine I’m working on putting together, for which I plan a series of articles about people who make their livings in the arts. It seems to me that often creative people get pegged as ‘lucky,’ as if their success was a coincidence. And sometimes that’s true.

If I had to say whether Rebecca Black’s Friday video had anything to do with the normal mechanisms of success, I’d say no. That was money and luck. And also, if Rebecca Black continues on to be a superstar long term, I’ll be somewhat surprised. But arts where a person’s looks can be an asset are a bit different from ones, like writing, where a person can remain almost entirely hidden from their audience.

As a matter for discussion, I hypothesize that there are four primary elements involved in becoming successful as a writer. I primarily mean of fiction here, but creative non-fiction has similar dynamics.

As an aside, I came up with this idea when I was having a chat about doctors with Tim. I noted that some doctors are terrible and I was trying to figure out why, when the have the same training and presumably are all smart enough to get into medical school.  It suddenly occurred to me that people have natural affinities and skills and even doctors are subject to this rule. The best ones are not only experienced and knowledgeable but have a passion for their work and a natural talent.

The same, I propose, is true for every occupation. There will always be people who are better at what they do than others in their field. Even waiters. They have to know what they’re doing, of course. But also, some will just be naturally better at it. They will have an intuitive feel for what makes someone a good waiter, and in particular, will know their owns strengths and weaknesses and will have devised a strategy and tactics for both taking advantage of their particular abilities and minimizing (or overcoming) the effects of their weaknesses.

So here’s a diagram of the four elements I propose. Talent, knowledge, experience, and passion. I think there’s probably an overall score, a total for these four elements that is ideal. It’s probably a range as opposed to a single number. And I suggest that talent and passion are the most important elements for achieving great success.

For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll define the terms, though these definitions may be added to or modified with further thought or through discussion here or elsewhere.

Talent is natural ability. For a writer, it means facility with language and/or skill at storytelling. It includes imagination and as in other fields, it involves being able to suss out one’s own niche. What particular things are you, as a writer good at?

Knowledge has to do with the mechanics of storytelling, sentences, the way a reader’s mind works and how to get out of that way, and so on. There are a whole string of elements that can be learned about writing. You can find a bunch of them on Chuck Wendig’s website, terribleminds.com. You can learn them by taking a course. You can read books about writing.

Experience comes from writing and from reading. Because you need to have been a reader in order to understand both what works generally as well as the way your own mind works in terms of words. You need to write, a lot. I don’t remember the exact number of words or stories he mentioned, but Warren Ellis once told me you have to write so many bad words or stories to get to the good ones. So experience is, in a way, first writing stories that don’t work. It’s like trying to make a map of cool places when you don’t have GPS or Google. You have to walk the streets and make notes. You have to explore.

Passion is your innate drive to pursue your creative work. It is what Jung talked about when he said that writers had been known to abandon their entire lives in order to write a story. It’s what people mean when they say they ‘have to’ write. It might be that a writer feels she has never been good at anything else. It’s very strong, this passion. It confronts and defeats obstacles. It doesn’t listen to nay-sayers. It’s a river carving its way inland from the ocean of your subconscious. Without it, all the talent and knowledge in the world will not get you there. It’s because of this element that people follow their bliss, pursuing creative work although it means living on the edge financially. Or when they have other demands on them, such as family and responsibility, they continue to pursue their creative work in spite of it not being the easiest or most lucrative thing they could do to make money.

I put this forward as a discussion topic. What is the magic ratio? What other things might be involved? Can a person be a success without one or more of these qualities? What does ‘success’ mean anyway?

 

Filed Under: Creativity, Earning a living as a writer

How the Publishing Industry Keeps Good Writers Down

20 October, 2011 By

I’ve said a lot in the past about how there are a new crowd of people who are publishing ebooks that just aren’t any good. I struggle against these people every day. They give ebooks a bad name. They’re the new vanity crowd. Or they’re trying to get rich quick. It’s a sham and it won’t work for them probably, unless they are truly great marketers. But for me, that’s not what books are about.

On the flipside of this discussion is what the big publishing houses are up to. It’s become a lot harder to get published in the traditional way. And the way the business is set up, it’s extremely difficult for smaller publishers to compete in the same arena. Not because of the market as much as it’s almost impossible to follow the established procedures unless you have a lot of money. And books aren’t really about money for me. They’re about art. And entertainment. Of course, someone will make money for providing that entertainment. But the rub is that because big publishers are owned by corporations, they care more about profits than anything else. So instead of looking at individual quality, they look at trends.

When Twilight made it big, they wanted the next big vampire thing. A novel has to come out at the right marketing moment in order to get in. Even if it’s really good.

The pieces are beginning to fall into place for independent writers and artists to break away both from the old publishing model and the new free for all. There is always a way around for the creative person who’s willing to work hard.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, Indie Publishing

What to do after you graduate

2 September, 2011 By

Or
What to do after you graduate?

On Tuesday, I turned in the culmination of the past year’s school work. It’s my second Masters degree in creative writing. The first degree was a Master of Fine Arts. It had a slightly different focus. In the recently completed degree, I also studied poetics or literary theory. It was more helpful than I thought it would be.

So now, fully armed with education, I’m officially in London writing.

I have stepped out of the frying pan and into the molten center of writerly impoverishment. Ahem. I mean freedom.

So what now, you may ask?

Well, I’m working on a new novel already. If you want to follow my progress, I put up a little meter to keep track. It’s here.

The working title of the novel is Nanosecond. It’s a soft sci fi story with a female hero. It plays with themes that have fascinated me for most of my life. The nature of time, the space-time continuum, oppression, freedom.

To me, a novel is a world. Perhaps our world is a novel and our ‘god’ is a writer. We take on lives of our own inside our god’s head. Like a mirror reflecting a mirror, back and forth from the macrocosm to the microcosm. Novels are worlds inside worlds.

The character of Salome in this novel we’re living is writing a book. She’s decided to write it in a very short amount of time, just to see if she can. Her previous novel took years to write. She’s finished 9 percent of ths new one in a few days.  She gets pulled into it, and soon a whole new world, a whole new existence emerges from the big yellow dump truck of her mind. What do you think?

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, writing

Dream Job

4 August, 2011 By

So for all of you thinking about making the break from working for the man in order to be a working writer, I thought I would tell you what a typical day is like for me.

I get up without an alarm clock. Strangely, since I’ve been doing this for almost a year now, my body clock has adapted to the fact that I can sleep whenever I want and I tend to wake up too early, my head full of things I want to do or musings over story lines, my own or ones that I’m editing.

I get up and make coffee and sit down at my desk. I check my email. Lots of people I work with, other writers, are in the US, so they often write to me while I sleep. I reply to emails, read Twitter. I socialize there for a while. I do think of this as part of being a writer. I’m a very social writer and if I were stuck at home all day without company, I’d go a little nuts.  Unlike when I worked a 9 to 5, I don’t worry about a boss coming in and catching me. But eventually my conscience will start to nag me. I’m my own boss now.

I make a to-do list for the day. It usually has word requirements on it for whatever long piece I’m working on. For example: Write 1500 words of novel. Then I list editing projects and due dates. I send update emails to writers whose work I have. Lately I’m having to keep track of story threads in Red Phone Box because it’s becoming much more tightly interwoven and requires more attention from me in terms of where each story is going. I send out “Are we all on the same page?” emails that show everyone what everyone else is working on.

I eat breakfast, if I feel like it. Usually something simple and quick. I can’t be bothered to spend a lot of time on it. I’m immersed in my work. I remind myself that I should drink liquids and get a bottle of water to keep on my desk.

I put my headphones on and listen to Focus, or I turn on Write or Die to get large chunks of rough drafts done in a short time. Or I sit with a draft and read and revise more slowly.

At some point, I eat lunch. Usually around three or four in the afternoon. If I’m lucky or need a break, I go for a walk, run an errand or go to an appointment. Then I keep working, going down my list, which is never really finished. As I go, I get new ideas. I keep adding to the list. It’s usually longer at the end of the day than at the beginning.

I publicize new stories as they come out. I study site statistics to find out what people like and what they don’t. I consult with various people. I chat up other writers and ask them to contribute to Red Phone Box. I go off to other people’s websites and read what they’re working on. I go to forums and chat. I send revisions back to authors.  At some point, usually 8 or 9 at night, I eat dinner and watch one episode of a TV series. Right now it’s Fringe.

I often go back to work after dinner, continuing until midnight or so, or whenever I feel like I might pass out. This is what I do twenty-five days out of thirty. I do it on weekends and weekdays alike.

There are moments of celebration about sales of stories or books or paid work. Or getting a really good story in my email. Or writing something that I really like. Or getting good feedback from someone I admire. There are moments of worry about how I’m going to keep doing this, how I will afford it, how I’ll stay in England. They’re brief. Mostly there is just the screen and the words and all of you and it’s actually amazingly fulfilling.

I feel lucky and grateful. I am, as the saying goes, following my bliss.

 

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, Personal, writing
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